Status (Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition)

In a similar way, Apache can be persuaded to cough up comprehensive diagnostic information by including and invoking the module mod_status:

This produces invaluable information for the webmaster of a busy site, enabling her to track down problems before they become disasters. However, since this is really our own business, we don't want the unwashed mob out on the Web jostling to see our secrets. To protect the information, we therefore restrict it to a whole or partial IP address that describes our own network and no one else's.

10.4.1. Server Status

For this exercise, which includes info as previously, the httpd.conf in ... /site.status file should look like this:

User webuser
Group webgroup
ServerName www.butterthlies.com
DocumentRoot /usr/www/APACHE3/site.status/htdocs
ExtendedStatus on

<Location /status>
order deny,allow
allow from 192.168.123.1
deny from all
SetHandler server-status
</Location>

<Location /info>
order deny,allow
allow from 192.168.123.1
deny from all
SetHandler server-status
SetHandler server-info
</Location>

The allow from directive keeps our laundry private.

Remember the way order works: the last entry has the last word. Notice also the use of SetHandler , which sets a handler for all requests to a directory, instead of AddHandler, which specifies a handler for particular file extensions. If you then access www.butterthlies.com/status, you get this response:

Apache Server Status for www.butterthlies.com
Server Version: Apache/1.3.14 (Unix)
Server Built: Feb 13 2001 15:20:23

Current Time: Tuesday, 13-Feb-2001 16:03:30 GMT
Restart Time: Tuesday, 13-Feb-2001 16:01:49 GMT
Parent Server Generation: 0 
Server uptime: 1 minute 41 seconds
Total accesses: 21 - Total Traffic: 49 kB
CPU Usage: u.0703125 s.015625 cu0 cs0 - .0851% CPU load
.208 requests/sec - 496 B/second - 2389 B/request
1 requests currently being processed, 5 idle servers 
_W___  _..........................................................
................................................................
................................................................
................................................................
Scoreboard Key: 
"_" Waiting for Connection, "S" Starting up, "R" Reading Request,
"W" Sending Reply, "K" Keepalive (read), "D" DNS Lookup,
"L" Logging, "G" Gracefully finishing, "." Open slot with no current process 

Srv PID  Acc      M CPU  SS Req Conn Child Slot Client        VHost 
Request 
0-0 2434 0/1/1    _ 0.01 93   5  0.0  0.00 0.00 192.168.123.1 www.butterthlies.com 
GET /status HTTP/1.1
1-0 2435 20/20/20 W 0.08  1   0 47.1  0.05 0.05 192.168.123.1 www.butterthlies.com 
GET /status?refresh=2 HTTP/1.1

Srv   Child Server number - generation 
PID   OS process ID 
Acc   Number of accesses this connection / this child / this slot 
M     Mode of operation 
CPU   CPU usage, number of seconds 
SS    Seconds since beginning of most recent request 
Req   Milliseconds required to process most recent request 
Conn  Kilobytes transferred this connection 
Child Megabytes transferred this child 
Slot  Total megabytes transferred this slot

There are several useful variants on the basic status request made from the browser:

status?notable: Returns the status without using tables, for browsers with no table support
status?refresh: Updates the page once a second
status?refresh=<n>: Updates the page every <n> seconds
status?auto: Returns the status in a format suitable for processing by a program

These can also be combined by putting a comma between them, i.e., http://www.butterthlies.com/status?notable,refresh=10.

10.4. Status

10.4.1. Server Status

10.4.2. ExtendedStatus